Resurrection Mall available now from Down & Out Books.
Look for the newest Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, in January, also from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

A Conversation With Todd Robinson

In an effort to
keep everyone from being bored with this blog (including me). Today marks the
first installment of a new feature. I’ll still do some Twenty Questions interviews,
but those are really only good one time around. Once people have answered them,
there’s not a lot left, even though I make an effort to swap out the questions
from time to time.

A good interview
should be more of a conversation, so that’s what we having here today. And not
just some boring conversation with some droog off the street. The break the
cherry of this new feature, we got Todd Robinson, founder and editor of the
late, lamented Thuglit, and internationally
published author of the The Hard Bounce
and its sequel Rough Trade. Most of
you already know Todd, at least by reputation. For those of you who haven’t yet
had the pleasure…well, there’s a lot I could tell you, but it’s better to hear
it from Big Daddy Thug himself.

You’re a Boston boy through and through.
How’d you end up in Yankeeland?

A series of bad
decisions. Add on another twenty years of bad decisions, and I'm still here.
New York is that unforgiving kind of town that grants a person enough of a
living to stay here without allowing the means to accumulate enough to fucking
leave. It's insidious.

But at this point,
my boy is here, so I'm here. I'm raising a New Yorker, so the best I can do is
accept a lifetime with a Mets fan.

Needless to say, he
is being raised with the concrete belief that the Yankees represent all that is
wrong in the world.

Thuglit was considered by many to be the
premier neo-noir outlet in the country. A lot
of now big names were published there before they became big deals. What gave
you the idea to start it up?

I got tired of the
shitty longstanding magazines tendency to publish bland crime lit suitable for
Nana. They weren't representing the kind of writing I was doing, and they sure
as shit weren't representing the shit I liked to read.

What do
you like to read? Not necessarily who, but what keeps you going through a book
and what will bring you back for more?

I'm reading a bunch
of different stuff. As much as I love crime fiction, I'm a little burnt out
after eleven years of reading submissions for the magazine. It's important for
me both as a writer and a reader not to burn out any further on a single genre.
I just finished Birdbox (horror) by
Josh Malerman, Deer Hunting With Jesus
(current affairs/non-fiction) by Joe Bageant, and just cracked open Utu by Caryl Ferey (crime fiction).

I have to admit my reading focuses a
lot—maybe too much—on crime. What is it about crime fiction that drew you in
originally? Is it the same as what keeps you there?

What drew me in was
that I recognized the characters and lives as reflections of the world I lived
in. I recognized the desperation and the lack of societal care for people who
were hurting and how they lashed out in a fashion that was sometimes criminal.
And I also recognized the humanity underneath the surface of the people others
might classify as damaged.

I write about my
people. I like stories that relate to those experiences and emotions. Sure, I
take those characters and scenarios down some fantastical roads, but do my damnedest
to keep the innate truths about the people themselves intact.

I hear you’re going back to France for
another tour. Who’s your French publisher and how did you get hooked up with
them?

Gallmeister
Editions publish my books in France. They have a unique way of finding authors.
They find an author they want to publish, then ask that author who they think
they should look at—someone that they might not have heard about. This is how
they've gotten their fingers on so many authors who are considered
"underground" here, and help them find a broader audience in France.
Their stable includes some of the bravest and most ferocious writers in
neo-noir...and then there's me.

Benjamin Whitmer
recommended me into the company. I owe that man at least a steak.

Are French author events different from
those you’ve been to here in the States?

Yes. People show
up.

Forgive me for this, but I don’t get out
much and live vicariously through my more successful friends, and I have a
question I’ve wondered about since your first trip to France. Are the events in
French or English? If French, do you speak French, or is there a translator?

The events are in
French with an interpreter. God help me if I didn't have one. I learned some
key phrases to engage people, and apparently my accent was convincing enough
for them to sometimes believe that I was a naturalized speaker—perhaps one
who'd suffered a recent head injury. Nevertheless, often people would just
continue the conversation in French...at least until they saw the panic in my
eyes as I frantically searched the room for my interpreter.

Here’s the big thing I wanted to talk about
today: You’re a respected voice in and for noir fiction. The late Roger Hobbs
referred to you as “the most important name in contemporary American noir.”
I’ve read all three of your books (Dirty
Words, The Hard Bounce, and Rough
Trade) and, while I find many of the short stories to be noir (especially
“Peaches,” which I consider one of the handful of best short stories I’ve ever
read), the novels strike be as black comedies not unlike some of Shane Black’s
films, such as Kiss Kiss Bang and The Nice Guys. What does “noir” mean to
you, and how noir do you think you are?

Meh. Noir has
become such a malleable term so as to become almost meaningless. It just sounds
good because it's French. How noir am I? Who the fuck knows? I'm just telling
stories how I want to tell them. Some darker, some with more of tongue-in-cheek
sensibility. I call my own style Idiot Noir. And I'm sure there are some who'd
argue that what I do isn't classically noir at all, due to the humor. That
said, my French publisher has included me in their Neo-Noir collection, so
there's that. And those beautiful bastards coined the term. Ergo, the noir
purists can suck it.

Lots of ways to order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.